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My First Experience At NYTech Meetup

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

-A wonderful opportunity to hear about new ideas, technologies and make connections.

I went for my first ever NY Tech Meetup (NYTM) on Tuesday, October 9th 2012 at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts after my business partner at iFunding recommended that we attend it. The Meetup is a great platform for new and upcoming technology companies that get 3-5 minutes to win the hearts and minds of a wide audience, while simultaneously gaining exposure to a huge crowd. It is an excellent opportunity to meet people from different backgrounds and see what others are doing in the extremely vibrant NYC tech scene.

over 27,800 individuals. Each Meetup is a showcase of technology entrepreneurs identifying a shared problem and then leveraging social media along with coding skills to resolve it. The guest speaker at yesterday’s event was Todd Park, CTO of the United States, who is known for his unique approach of trying to run the government like a Silicon Valley company. He spoke about the White House’s Innovation Fellowship program, an initiative to improve the lives of the American people, save taxpayer money, and fuel job creation, by embracing open innovation. Click here for a list of the companies that demoed last night.

NYTM has a firm boo rule in place for people who ask “what’s your business model?” This is in line

with their philosophy of providing a demo opportunity to unique startups and technologies, not letting revenue model be a deciding factor in the same. Another excellent concept was when halfway through the Meetup, there was an announcement to ‘know your neighbor’, which involved just introducing yourself to someone around you whom you’ve never met or spoken to before. Great way to get a conversation flowing. I spoke to a gentleman who worked as a consultant in Germany all his life, before deciding two weeks back to follow his passion, quit his job and move to NYC for good with the hopes of being part of an evolving startup ecosystem. Pretty inspiring eh!

The after party was OK. It was a unique opportunity to meet with individuals from companies that demoed, but it was difficult to meet interesting people since most seemed engaged with business associates.